


Day 128

by Josh_the_Bard



Series: A Year in Kirkwall [128]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:22:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24067294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Josh_the_Bard/pseuds/Josh_the_Bard
Series: A Year in Kirkwall [128]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589257





	Day 128

Nicolás De Pavia woke early that morning excited for the start of what could very well be the defining project of his life. 

Nicolás was, if anything, the victim of too much success. As the fifth son of a relatively small Orlesian house, he had been sent to the University of Orlais where he had studied the arts exclusively, or tried to. Art and theology were inextricably linked. If Nicolás had to carve one more statue of the prophet Andraste in all her glory or Maferath looking properly chastised he would go absolutely mad.

Nicolás graduated and began working for the nobility carving their likenesses into whatever material they could afford. Once he had even gotten to work with Dawnstone. But alas he had run afoul of the ‘great game.’ Lord such and such bragged so much about the magnificent works of the ‘lowly artist’ he was patronizing that another noble sent an assassin after Nicolás just to spite his patron.

Nicolás had had to fake his own death and flee Orlais after that. He doubted anyone still cared about him anymore, the assassin had accomplished the spirit of the goal after all, but Nicolás didn’t dare risk it. So now he went by De La Hera and pretended that he was a naturally gifted savant instead of a man who spent ten years of his life honing his craft unter a disapproving master sculptor.

Today though, everything he had been through was made worthwhile by the opportunity before him. The citystate of Kirkwall had no official ruler but several noble families had pooled their resources to commission a giant statue to commemorate their champion’s victory over the heretic Qunari invaders.

Nicolás had been at the official Champion of Kirkwall feast but some fool had mistakenly seated him at the far end of the room from the Champion. Nicolás had not been able to get a good look at the man’s features. He had tried to call on the Champion this morning to get a better likeness but the dwarf at the door had politely turned him away. He had next tried to find a portrait of the Champion but it seemed as though none yet existed.

Finally Nicolás decided it might be best to sculpt the Champion in battle regalia. Which would have been far easier if he had seen the Champion in his battle regalia.

Nicolás took a quick look around the docs and noted a few guardsmen standing watch. He remembered hearing that the Champion was rarely seen outside the company of the Captain of the Guards. The city guard would have been on the front lines during the invasion, was the Champion a member of the guard? He must be. Plus he would have a constant model of the uniform while he worked so that settled that. He had long since decided on the pose. The Champion with a boot on the severed head of the Arishok, raising a sword triumphantly in the air. With the money he had been given for the sculpture he could have a tranquill to enchant the blade to burn with continual flame, mirroring the flaming sword of Andraste.

Centuries from now, when the people of Kirkwall told legends of their Champion’s heroic defeat of the Qunari, the triumph of Andraste over the heathens, it would be Nicolás’s work that they would show their children. Orlesian houses rose and fell, and when they fell, so fell everything related to them. But as long and the Chantry held back the tide of the Qun, this work would endure.

Nicolás smiled at the fulfillment of his destiny and set chilel to stone.


End file.
